Ours is a dying business –
SHERL: I said, no puns!
1st DIG: We’re sorry, guv. That’s one of our favourite ones.
In Elsinore Castle
Enter SHERLOCK HOLMES and WATSON.
SHERL: You know my methods, Watson; when in doubt
Eliminate th’improbable – what is left
Must be the truth howe’er unlike it seems.
WATS: So you have always said, but stil I am
In some uncertainty over the murderer’s name
Who was it?
SHERL: I wil tel you presently.
But first I expect some news. This may be it.
(Enter to them FORTINBRAS)
FORT: Alack! What a dreadful day! The heavens themselves
Could no more cease from weeping than the sea –
SHERL: Come, pul yourself together. I have not time
To listen to long speeches. What’s your news?
FORT: Hamlet is dead!
SHERL: I thought as much. Go on.
FORT: And Claudius! Laertes! Also Gertrude!
SHERL: The whole bang shoot, in fact. That’s life
Or, as my digger friend would say, that’s death.
(To WATSON)
You asked just now what was the murderer’s name.
I told you. Eliminate al else
And what is left…
WATS: You mean, it’s Fortinbras?
SHERL: No, no, he’s just the man who brings the news.
The gravediggers. Their trade was bad and threatened by
Redundancy. So they conceived a plot
To slay the highest in the land and profit
By their piecework. Only one mistake they made.
To imitate the ghost and wear their boots the while.
I wrote a monograph on soles you may have read.
WATS: May God have mercy.
SHERL: Mercy on what?
WATS: Their soles.
SHERL: That settles it – let’s leave this cursed place
Where none do ope their mouths but they do utter puns
Besides, I have a telegram from Lestrade in the Yard,
Begging for my help with some new case.
WATS: What says he now?
SHERL: ‘Othel o’s wife is dead.
We found her lying lifeless on her bed’,
WATS: No sooner is one case accounted for,
Then we go chasing after -
SHERL: Don’t say it!
WATS: -some Moor.
(SHERLOCK HOLMES knocks WATSON to the ground. Exeunt omnes. Curtain)
The Sherlock Holmes Magazine * Issue 28 *1998